So You Want to be an Audiobook Blogger: ArmchairBEA Day 4

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I am probably the worst person to be talking about nurturing blog relations. I have a total of 4 followers on my blog. I think that is partially because of WordPress quirkiness which I have a love/hate relationship with. My traffic isn’t especially heavy, getting fifty visits is a great day for me. So, instead I will talk a little bit about my philosophy of blogging and the relationships I have made.

Blogging is the ultimate in self promotion. Until ArmchairBEA thing, I was quite the minimalist. I started this blog in January, and I never got involved in Challenges or memes. I think part of it was because I am new, and part because I really didn’t know anyone in the blogging world. The only one I was interested in was The Audiobook Challenge, yet, the highest level was 20 Audiobooks and I average over 15 audiobooks a month. Of course, back then I thought the point of challenges was completing the task, now I know it’s truly about networking.

Being a 37 year old male audiobook blogger, I am quite a minority here in the Armchair BEA world. Not only that, many of my reviews are horror and military sci-fi which there are not a lot of bloggers writing about. Yet, I have had some success.

First off, I have developed good working relationships with various audiobook companies, particularly, Blackstone Audio, Hachette Audio, Tantor Audio and Brilliance Audio. I try to base these relationships on honesty. If I can get a copy of their audio productions through the library, or some other means, I do. Only when I can’t find something do I make a request. If I am not interested in something, I say so. I do this for fun and I’ve been reading since I was three, so I have a pretty good idea about what I would like.

If you are interested in audiobook Blogging, here are some resources you can use.

Overdrive offers free downloadable Audiobooks, and E-Books through your local Libraries. Talk to your librarian and check you libraries websites for more information.

I know most people have heard of Audible as a distributor as digital audiobooks. The also have some excellent imprints which offer original products. I subscribe to their Platinum Plan and use it mostly for Original Audible offerings. It’s not to expensive either.

Audiobook Jukebox is one of my favorite online resources. It’s a simple link up site for audiobook reviews. It’s a great place to discover reviews, and bloggers, and promote your own work.

Social Media

Using Twitter and Facebook, as well as other social media sites is key to any blogger. When posting my reviews, I always makes sure to tag the author, narrator, and production company. I have developed some great contacts, authors, narrators, promotional personnel, and audiobook fans and bloggers through this. In fact, my most successful blogging day hit wise was when author Larry Correia promoted my review of his novel Monster Hunter International on his blog.

The last thing I recommend is browsing through Audiobook production company websites, using coming soon features and advanced search to find a book you would be interested in, and contact them asking for the opportunity to review. Again, be honest and open with them, about your experience and goals. Here are three of my favorite sites, along with suggestions on who to contact.

One of my favorites. Try talking to @BlackstoneAudio or dogearedcopy on Twitter.

Tweet @HachttteAudio or Mitzpa on Twitter. They should be more than willing to help.

Try tweeting Jennifer at @TantorAudio. She is quite nice.

Well, that’s all for me. Feel free to comment about any other audiobook resources you may know.

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10 responses

Wow, I’m so glad we found each other for the interview, because while I’m not “following” your blog, I’m visiting every day now, and this post is by far the most helpful for someone like me. We don’t listen to the same type of audio books, but now I know who to contact at different audio book companies when I’m ready to do so. Great post!!!

Please, please, please join the audio book challenge. I didn’t mean to limit people in their listening. Next year I’m going to do a sky’s the limit level or something like that. So many people have already completed the challenge. I hadn’t heard of Overdrive yet, so thank you for that.

I hope you didn’t take that comment about the audiobook challenge as an insult. I love that you do it. I was just try to point out how I missed the whole point of challenges to begin with. I will join over this weekend.

It was blogger’s enthuisam over audiobooks that got me hooked two years ago. I listen to 2-3 a month. Audiobook Jukebox is a great resource. Brilliance is here in my home town, I should go and check them out and see if they have tours!! Tantor Audio is new to me.

Audible is my choice for audiobooks, with my one book a month plan. But I also utilize the library quite a bit to check out audiobooks with good success.
I’ll have to check out Audiobook Jukebox sometime – thanks for posting the great resources!

I LOVE Overdrive. I used to use it a lot when I lived in New York, but none of my libraries in south Texas use it. 😦

15 audiobooks a month is seriously impressive. It takes me about a month to get through ONE. Unless I have a sewing project or something, the only time I ever really listen to audiobooks is in the car.

[…] during Armchair BEA I wrote a post I think would apply to this topic, called So You Want to Be An Audiobook Blogger. So instead of doing that I thought I would just go all random, and talk about some of my pet […]